`` She was a professor ? ''

That 's what an astonished caseworker at Adult Protective Services asked about Margaret Mary Vojtko when informed of the 83-year-old woman 's destitute situation , according to an op-ed in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette . Vojtko died September 1 of a massive heart attack .

Yes , she was a professor . An adjunct professor of French at Duquesne University . Until she was not renewed this year , with neither due process nor severance pay .

She taught students for 25 years , with no health benefits , no retirement benefits , and low wages .

The minimum pay for adjunct faculty at Duquesne used to be $ 2500 per course . After an ongoing effort by the United Steelworkers to unionize adjuncts there , the university paid $ 3,500 per course .

Vojtko 's situation was not unusual for adjuncts in academia . That is why many have taken the hashtag #iamMargaretMary to tweet their indignation at her working conditions , lack of support and lack of respect .

The dirty little secret is that higher education is staffed with an insufficiently resourced , egregiously exploited , contingent `` new faculty majority . '' In addition to the 49.3 % of faculty in part-time positions -LRB- 70 % in community colleges -RRB- , another 19 % are full-time , nontenure-track . -LRB- These numbers do not include graduate assistants or postdocs . -RRB-

Adjunct professors , like many hard-working Americans , are the working poor . They are one step away from `` We do n't need your services anymore '' or one medical emergency away from being destitute , like Vojtko .

If Vojtko was good enough to be entrusted with teaching Duquesne undergraduates , how can the university justify not providing her -LRB- and her adjunct colleagues -RRB- with health care and other basic benefits ?

If American higher education says to students and society that a college education is the path to the middle class , how can we justify such treatment of these professionals , with advanced degrees , who are teaching the students ?

We are living a lie that cheats these professors and the students they teach , particularly in access universities and community colleges where adjunct faculty numbers , like percentages of lower-income students , are highest and instructional spending per student is lowest .

The story is not just about Duquesne . Certainly , the institution 's wealth -LRB- $ 171 million endowment , tuition over $ 28,000 -RRB- and Catholic status -LRB- Catholic social doctrine supports collective bargaining rights -RRB- make the situation -- and Duquesne 's refusal to recognize a union that adjunct faculty voted for overwhelmingly -- particularly indefensible .

Duquesne University 's administration has provided a response to the situation , suggesting that there were caring responses by people within the institution to Vojtko 's circumstances . However , acts of charity are not conditions-of-employment justice for hard-working adjunct professors .

The larger issues are not about individual responsibility or culpability for actions toward Vojtko , but rather , about collective responsibility for the structural conditions of work that contributed to her circumstances , and that leave significant segments of the academic workforce with no benefits and low pay .

So Duquesne should recognize the adjunct union , bargain in good faith , grant benefits and set up a professional development fund in Vojtko 's name . But this story speaks more broadly about a horrible reality in higher education .

Adjunct professors , as part of a growing army of working poor , are at the center of the academic labor movement , just as fast-food workers are now at the center of the larger labor movement . We are in the midst of deciding the extent to which we are an inclusive society that will live up to our nation 's promise that hard work pays off .

The question is : How will we treat working people ? Will we , the richest nation on earth , continue to structure employment in ways that reduce large segments of society to near Dickensian conditions of existence ? Or can we muster the collective will to appropriately remunerate and honor the work of all working Americans ?

In academia , that means tenure stream faculty , staff , students , administrators , and communities must recognize in Vojtko 's fate the ugly and diminished future of higher education and choose , in big ways and small ways , a more equitable path .

Adjunct professors have taken initiatives to change the status quo . Some have joined advocacy groups , such as the New Faculty Majority . Some are involved with caucuses within unions and professional associations where they gather data about pay and working conditions , define best practices , and work to ensure that adjunct faculty are not discriminated against .

Adjuncts are organizing for benefits , a living wage , and conditions that will benefit their students and their schools . In Pittsburgh , as in Boston , Los Angeles , Seattle , and Washington , there are union campaigns for adjunct unions in private -LRB- often wealthy -RRB- universities . There is also much organizing in public institutions , and in units that combine adjunct with full-time and tenure track faculty .

No one deserves the treatment and fate experienced by Margaret Mary Vojtko , who escaped the 21st century equivalent of Victorian poorhouses in a cardboard casket . American higher education can and should do better for those who teach our students .

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Margaret Mary Vojtko , who taught at a university for 25 years , died in poverty

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Gary Rhoades : Adjunct professors are paid very little and have no benefits

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He says the dirty secret in higher education is that adjuncts are used a lot

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Rhoades : Adjunct faculty do not deserve to be the new working poor in society